Take Two: Leaving the Metaphors

[greenstorm]

I went away from home and came back thirty-six hours later and ten pounds lighter - I checked before and after, oddly. There was a wind blowing last night and I wrestled with my bed until it was sleepable and then climbed in for the first time. There's history in this bed - it was the bed that Kynnin and I bought, first thing, when we moved in together. It was his and Mouse's for a time, and now it's mine again and last night was my first time on it (although I suppose in reality there were many nights on it before, and many of those also alone).

My rats had missed me, to their credit. It's still impossible for a person to match my rats for sheer friendly-lovingness-- even after I abandon them in a strange place for a month, or disappear for a day and two nights, they are still happy to see me. There's a lesson in there somewhere about love and trust though I may be too tired to wrap myself around it right now.

I had a long walk last night in the wind between three and five in the morning. I stopped for pho and watched drunk teenagers help each other to the bathroom to puke; I walked and watched leaves skitter along at my pace with a dry screeching sound.

I was more-or-less in bed for two days this weekend though now I'm out and done with that. My life had become routine and the routine had become habit and the habit had become a straightjacket (o, metaphor, how you pervade my very essence!). It's funny how you expect that the same thing that made you happy last year - or last week - should still make you happy this morning. True of rats and tea, it's not an expectation to base a whole life around.

And what should you base your life around? Well. Isn't that just the question now? I've always held the art of being happy in high esteem. Somewhere along the way I forsook honesty in pursuit of an attempt at gentleness which seems to have been a mistake to do wholesale. I'm particularly graceless at gentleness anyways. It seems like joy may be worth following; the other side of that coin is stability and steadiness and that doesn't seem to get along with me anyhow. What is your basic motivation? What drives you?

Comments

[greensinger.livejournal.com]

The wheel comes 'round, o fortuna.
All this familiarity
I left gracelessness and the power of artlessness in one moment
but to honesty I could never be unfaithful,
the bansidhe
she thirsts...

[dunfalach.livejournal.com]

> And what should you base your life around?

Which really comes back to the question of the purpose for us being here. If there's a purpose for which God created each of us, then it stands to reason that the best thing to base your life around is that purpose, since it's why you were invented to begin with. If there is no created purpose for each of us, "honesty rather than gentleness" would seem to say that it doesn't matter what you base your life around, it won't impart any more meaning to it in the end.

That's not to say I'm doing perfectly at living according to a purpose. There are plenty of times that I am more interested in whatever way of entertaining myself has struck my fance at the moment than I am in listening for God to have a purpose for that moment.

Hmm...you've gotten me into a philosophical mood, evidently. This is one reason I'm much happier as a Christian creationist than I would be if I converted to atheism and evolution. My own logic would skewer me into fatalistic depression, I think, if I believed my life was a "cosmic accident" to use a phrase whose author I no longer recall. I can't say I always live day to day as if I was made for a purpose, but one of the benefits of Christianity *is* the belief that I was individually designed and planned out for some purpose (or probably purposes), whether large or small, and therefore have meaning and worth before I've actually done anything to earn either. If I don't stop here, I'll preach a sermon, I think, on the mental track I'm on. :> Because the next step down that train of thought is the unearned favor of grace and salvation. Of course, if you're in the mood to hear the rest, you always know you can ask. :D

It is possible to be honest and gentle at the same time, by the way. Too many people (not necessarily you) trot out cruelty under the banner of honesty so they can feel good about it. I think I know what you're aiming at, though, in deceiving someone (and sometimes yourself) about the true state of your interaction with them in order to keep things "happy".